ABOUT 36% of Filipinos believe former vice president Maria Leonor G. Robredo could have performed better than President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. in leading the country and solving its problems, a new survey by WR Numero Research showed.
The survey was conducted in December 2023 and also showed that 35% of the respondents disagreed, while 29% were unsure that Ms. Robredo, who lost the presidential race to Mr. Marcos in 2022, could have done a better job as president.
“Across self-identified partisanship, 57% of those identifying as opposition agree with Robredo better handling the country’s problems,” WR Numero said in a statement. Among self-identified Marcos supporters (41%), 34% agreed to the possibility, the pollster added.
The survey was held months after Filipinos endured soaring costs of basic commodities such as rice, whose market prices had risen to as much as 57 a kilo in September.
Philippine headline inflation hit a 14-year high of 8.7% year on year in the first month of 2023. It declined to 3.9% in December, but the full-year average for 2023 hit 6.0%, breaching the central bank’s 2%-4% target.
Mr. Marcos, who led the Agriculture department for over a year, imposed a price cap on rice in September, a move that had been criticized by some of the country’s seasoned economists.
Ms. Robredo launched an anti-poverty program during her vice presidency despite having a relatively low budget.
Those who agree with such a “could have” situation are probably Duterte supporters who can entertain a Robredo-Duterte tandem,” Anthony Lawrence A. Borja, a political science professor at De La Salle University, said in a Facebook Messenger chat. “Past elections prove that Filipinos can be flexible with their choice of rulers.”
He said the undecided might have been those who are “too disillusioned to support anyone or entertain an alternate reality at this point.”
An OCTA Research poll conducted from Dec. 10 to 14 showed that the trust rating for Mr. Marcos rebounded in the last quarter of 2023 after it rose to 76% from 73% the previous quarter.
Only 8% said they distrust him, while 17% were undecided, according to the December poll.
Mr. Borja said shifts in overall attitudes and political support are expected because “we are in a period of political repolarization.”
“Mr. Marcos had no sense of the real problems of Filipinos and failed to appreciate the complementarity of equity and distribution to efficiency as the country recovered from the pandemic,” Leonardo A. Lanzona, Jr. who teaches economics at Ateneo de Manila University, said via Messenger.
“His government never had any viable program that was presented and discussed to the public,” he added, noting that Ms. Robredo, in contrast, has been emphasizing the need to focus on the laylayan or the marginalized.
“The impact of the pandemic was greater for the poor in disadvantaged regions,” he noted. The returns of government investments in health, education and infrastructure would have been higher if these were targeted to the poor regions where agriculture is more prominent, he added.
Hansley A. Juliano, who teaches political science at the same university, said the WR Numero poll suggests there still seems to be a large section of the population not inclined towards the Marcoses.
But the opposition had failed to convert them, he said via Messenger chat.
“That sizable 29.4% who were undecided cannot become opposition supporters if opposition rhetoric, tactics, spokesperson and “fronting/facing” organizations do not change tactics.”
Mr. Juliano said the opposition needs to “aggressively engineer local alliances and movements that can shift congressional composition in 2025.”
Mr. Marcos, 66, won an unprecedented majority in the Philippine post-EDSA electoral history with over 31 million votes, against Ms. Robredo’s over 14 million votes, WR Numero noted. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza
